Latest reviews – Page 470
-
Reviews
Dead Bodies
Dir: Robert Quinn. Ireland. 2003. 85mins.Dead Bodies achieves most of what it hopes to be: a low-budget, jokey thriller peopled by plot-expedient characters who are too young to develop character or motivation. But the debut feature from director Robert Quinn, , the first film shot in Ireland on high-definition, lacks ...
-
Reviews
Say It In My Own Words
Say It In My Own Words (Dillo Con Parole Mie)Lee Marshall in RomeDir: Daniele Luchetti. Italy. 2003. 108minsDaniele Luchetti scored a minor hit in 1995 with the classroom comedy drama La Scuola and followed it with the intermittently interesting Piccoli Maestri (1998), about a group of students caught up in ...
-
Reviews
Distant (Uzak)
DistantDan Fainaru in IstanbulDir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Turkey. 2002. 106mins.With a high profile after its selection in competition at Cannes later this month, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's new film promises to become a surefire hit on the festival circuit. Faithful to Ceylan's intransigently ascetic reputation, it has already collected all the ...
-
Reviews
X2: X-Men United
X2: X-MEN UNITEDMike Goodridge in Los AngelesDir: Bryan Singer. US. 2003. 135mins.Bryan Singer lifts the X-Men franchise out of the formulaic superhero realm in his rip-roaring sequel which, having had the scene set for it so efficiently by the 2000 smash original, is as subversive and sophisticated as any summer ...
-
Reviews
Ghosts Of The Abyss
Dir: James Cameron. US. 2003. 59mins.For his first film since 1997's Titanic, Oscar-winning director James Cameron has chosen to return to the vessel that made him king of the world, this time with the large format 3-D cameras of Imax. It probably sounded like a money-spinner when this film was ...
-
Reviews
A Mighty Wind
Dir: Christopher Guest. US. 2003. 92mins.Like the two earlier pictures which writer/director/actor Christopher Guest co-wrote with Eugene Levy - 2000's Best In Show and 1996's Waiting for Guffman - A Mighty Wind is a film with a premise but no plot. The concepts themselves - a folk music reunion, the ...
-
Reviews
Heavenly Grassland (Tian Shang Cao Yuan)
Dirs: Mailisi, Saifu. China. 2002. 105 mins.Redolent of Nikita Mikhalkov's 1991 Urga (though more idealised) crossed with 2001's Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner (though much more conventional), Heavenly Grassland tells of a small Chinese boy adopted by a family in the remote steppes of Inner Mongolia. An intimate, very small-scale story ...
-
Reviews
The Barbecue People
Dir. David Ofek, Yossi Madmony. Israel. 2002. 102mins.The feature debut by two Israeli directors who have a strong body of TV work behind them at home, The Barbecue People is an ambitious jigsaw puzzle that profiles one specific community of immigrants in Israel, the Iraqi Jews. First launched at last ...
-
Reviews
Holes
Dir: Andrew Davis. US. 2003. 118 mins. The second delivered film from Cary Granat's Anschutz-backed production outfit Walden Media (this time co-produced with Phoenix Pictures), Holes is that rare thing - a family film which treats its target young audience with respect and intelligence. Walden was formed in 2001 to ...
-
Reviews
Bon Voyage
Dir: Jean-Paul Rappeneau. 2003. France. 114mins.Thirteen years after he adapted Jean Rostand's Cyrano De Bergerac and seven years after his swashbuckling take on Jean Giono's The Horseman On The Roof, Jean-Paul Rappeneau throws off the cultural shackles of the heritage feature and returns to his first love: the romantic adventure ...
-
Reviews
Bulletproof Monk
Dir: Paul Hunter. US. 2003. 104mins. Hollywood's latest attempt to infuse a familiar genre with added youth appeal casts Hong Kong legend Chow Yun-Fat in a slight but pleasantly breezy East-meets-West martial arts adventure leavened with odd couple comedy. To hardcore Chow fans - who have been waiting more than ...
-
Reviews
What A Girl Wants
Dir: Dennie Gordon. US. 2003. 95mins. Although the trailers made it look like another trashy teen flick, What A Girl Wants surprisingly possesses a degree of class. The fairy-tale story of a Brooklyn teenager who runs away to England to discover her aristocratic dad recalls Disney smash The Princess Diaries ...
-
Reviews
Fear And Trembling (Stupeur Et Tremblements)
Dir: Alain Corneau. France. 2003. 107mins.An unusual French take on life in the Japanese workplace, Stupeur Et Tremblements (literally Fear And Trembling) is a tightly-executed social drama with a vein of absurdist humour discretely buried beneath the surface. The film, which by some accounts only just missed out on a ...
-
Reviews
It's Raining Cows (Piovono Mucche)
Dir: Luca Vendruscolo. Italy. 2003. 95 mins.Films about the disabled tend to fall into two camps: either they are 'you can do it!' Hollywood schmaltz-fests; or so rigidly worthy and politically correct that they end up boring the audience. This little Italian gem, however, which mixes able-bodied and handicapped actors, ...
-
Reviews
Fat Pizza
Dir: Paul Fenech. Australia. 2003. 97mins.If there was an international festival for the grossest, most politically incorrect films of 2003, Fat Pizza would definitely be Australia's submission, and short-priced favourite for top honours. A spin-off from two seasons of a cult sitcom on SBS, Australia's multi-cultural television channel, and a ...
-
Reviews
A Man Apart
Dir: F Gary Gray. US. 2003. 109mins.Filmed two years ago, before the release of its star's 2001 breakthrough The Fast And The Furious, Vin Diesel vehicle A Man Apart delivers some stylishly violent drug cop action but never quite makes it as the more weighty crime drama it clearly wants ...
-
Reviews
A Big Girl Like You (Une Grande Fille Comme Toi)
Dir: Christophe Blanc. France. 2003. 91mins.This insider study of a mixed-up adolescent girl identifies so utterly with its main character that it risks appearing as stroppy and directionless as she is. But in the end there is something mesmeric about the camera's obsession with the face of first-time, pulled-off-the-street actress ...
-
Reviews
Chouchou
Dir: Merzak Allouache. France. 105minsAfter nearly a decade of supporting roles in mostly indifferent French commercial pictures, Casablanca-born stand-up comic Gad Elmaleh at last makes his screen breakthrough in this serviceable self-devised screen vehicle. He plays a young Algerian trying to cope with life in Paris as an illegal immigrant ...
-
Reviews
Johnny English
Dir: Peter Howitt. UK. 2003. 89mins.More Carry On Spying than Austin Powers, Johnny English is a surprisingly tentative spy spoof that should still prove a licence to print money for production company Working Title. A family-friendly version of Mike Myers' racier, more inventive espionage antics, the combination of local comedy ...
-
Reviews
Anger Management
Dir: Peter Segal. US. 2003. There are some films in which the teaming of two stars is so enticing that critical appraisal of the film which goes on around them is almost moot. Anger Management - which brings Adam Sandler together with Jack Nicholson - is one such film. Critical ...